<p>To put it simply: how does one measure the strength of a school's alumni network? On the crudest level, more alumni = stronger network. But I doubt that the top liberal arts colleges have poorer alumni networks than your average state university, on a national level. Then, how does one make a distinction between regional and national reputation? How does one assign a relative number to reputation and networking strength, anyhow?</p>
<p>well strong alumni networks I can think of are Florida, Texas, Penn State, Clemson, UVA, normally big public schools with a college football team and highly “ranked” schools have great national reputations</p>
<p>^ Aside from hearsay, I mean, how does one MEASURE alumni strength?</p>
<p>I’m not so sure there’s a numerical or objective way to measure it. How do you measure how strong an alum’s bond is to his alma mater? Just counting donations doesn’t necessarily mean those who don’t contribute money have no connection to the school at all. Just having many graduates doesn’t mean they all support the school. </p>
<p>I believe US News uses the percentage of alums of who donate to the school.</p>
<p>Schools such as Williams, Holy Cross, Amherst, Dartmouth, Duke, ND, usually have some of the highest alumni giving rates.</p>
<p>I would look at alumni giving rate as a strong indicator of the loyalty, an therefore active network, you’ll find among alum. In many cases the larger the school, the less effective the network. UCs are a good example of this.</p>
<p>I don’t like the Alumni Giving metric, but if you’re going to use it, please do it within peer groups. Privates and publics have different missions and IMO, this is the single most useless element of the USWNR rankings methodology as privates and publics are incorrectly (IMO) held to the same standard. </p>
<p>In addition to the differing missions, there are differing histories of how actively schools solicit their students/alumni. Colleges with a long history of this (read: Northeastern elites and probably many of the Southern publics) have been doing this for decades. They train their students early in the process that they are expected to give back to the school. Other colleges have more recently begun to catch on and copy this, but trying to attract the donations of large numbers of older alumni is a very difficult task. Perhaps a more effective and more real-time measurement of alumni satisfaction would be the % of giving by students within their first five years after graduation. </p>
<p>I plan a thread on this later in my series, but below is a sneak peek at the latest USNWR data on Alumni Giving.</p>
<p>% Alumni Giving , Private National University</p>
<p>60.7% , Princeton
50.9% , Dartmouth
49.7% , Notre Dame
41.2% , Yale
39.7% , Harvard
39.2% , Duke
39.1% , USC
39.0% , Brown
38.7% , U Penn
37.3% , MIT
36.6% , Emory
35.9% , Columbia
35.4% , Wash U
34.7% , Johns Hopkins
34.5% , Stanford
33.5% , Rice
32.7% , U Chicago
32.0% , Cornell
31.9% , Wake Forest
31.8% , Brandeis
31.8% , Lehigh
31.3% , Northwestern
31.1% , Caltech
27.6% , Georgetown
24.2% , Vanderbilt
23.5% , Tufts
23.3% , Boston College
22.3% , Fordham
21.9% , Yeshiva
20.1% , Carnegie Mellon
19.5% , BYU
19.2% , Tulane
18.8% , U Miami
18.5% , Case Western
18.1% , Syracuse
17.9% , U Rochester
16.7% , SMU
16.6% , Worcester
16.4% , Rensselaer
11.5% , Pepperdine
10.6% , NYU
9.8% , George Washington
8.7% , Boston University</p>
<p>% Alumni Giving , State University</p>
<p>28.9% , GEORGIA TECH
28.1% , CLEMSON
23.1% , U VIRGINIA
22.3% , U N CAROLINA
21.7% , WILLIAM & MARY
19.7% , PENN STATE
18.5% , U CONNECTICUT
18.4% , VIRGINIA TECH
17.9% , UC S BARBARA
17.6% , U WASHINGTON
17.3% , U MICHIGAN
17.2% , U FLORIDA
16.2% , TEXAS A&M
15.7% , OHIO STATE
15.7% , PURDUE
15.5% , U TEXAS
15.3% , MICHIGAN ST
15.1% , RUTGERS
15.0% , INDIANA U
14.7% , U PITTSBURGH
14.7% , U MINNESOTA
14.1% , U ILLINOIS
14.0% , U GEORGIA
13.6% , UCLA
13.1% , UC BERKELEY
12.9% , U IOWA
12.6% , U WISCONSIN
11.7% , UC IRVINE
11.7% , U MARYLAND
11.2% , UC DAVIS
10.2% , UC S CRUZ
9.9% , U DELAWARE
7.1% , UC SAN DIEGO</p>
<p>% Alumni Giving , LAC</p>
<p>63.3% , Carleton
60.1% , Amherst
59.7% , Williams
59.3% , Middlebury
54.3% , Davidson
54.0% , Bowdoin
52.5% , Holy Cross
52.3% , Trinity
50.7% , Pomona
50.5% , Wesleyan
48.5% , Wellesley
48.2% , Hamilton
47.8% , Swarthmore
47.8% , W&L
47.3% , Scripps
47.2% , Haverford
46.8% , Colby
43.2% , Bard
43.0% , Bates
42.9% , Grinnell
42.9% , Whitman
41.8% , Claremont McK
40.9% , Sewanee
40.8% , Oberlin
40.7% , Macalester
40.6% , Bryn Mawr
40.4% , Colgate
40.3% , Occidental
40.0% , Mt. Holyoke
39.5% , Smith
39.0% , Furman
38.3% , Kenyon
36.3% , Bucknell
36.0% , Harvey Mudd
35.0% , Lafayette
32.3% , Vassar
31.8% , US Military Acad
29.7% , Barnard
29.0% , Colorado College
24.1% , U Richmond
22.1% , US Naval Acad</p>
<p>Thanks, hawkette. I know Carleton attributes its smaller endowment in part to lacking a history of alumni giving, so I’m surprised that it tops your LAC list.</p>
<p>Also interesting is the 20% gap between P and HY.</p>
<p>Among the top LAC’s-alumni giving > 50%-Holy Cross and Davidson are the only ones with Division1 sports.</p>
<p>I was surprised to see USC ahead of Stanford in CA.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Princeton begins inculcating school spirit and tradition into its students the minute they set foot on campus. They do it, without the sports angle, better than any other college I know of. Reunions weekend is amazing: people get dressed up in wacky orange-and-black outfits, march in a parade through campus, and get teary-eyed singing ‘Old Nassau’. Those are the sort of people who also give generously and are intensely loyal to the school. At some colleges that might be a small percentage of alums, while at Princeton it’s a majority.</p>
<p>Keilexandra</p>
<p>Carleton has actually had the top giving rate among all US colleges for years. While it’s endowment is quite healthy, it’s not quite in HYP territory. The school simple draws a student body, though still quite varied, with proportionately more future academics and non-profit directors than other colleges. Once all grown up, they contribute in very large numbers to the alma mater they love, but their pockets are, by career choice, just not quite as deep as, say, those of investment bankers. </p>
<p>If you look at Brown you see a somewhat similar situation. Total endowment numbers just don’t reflect a top 10 giving percentage ranking. Their alumni base, another very happy and devoted group, have traditionally simply been less likely to head to Wall Street than Head Start.</p>
<p>actually it’s pretty easy to trick the alumni giving system. The other day, Clemson announced a competition where we are facing off against USC to see which percentage has the highest PERCENT of students, faculty, alumni who give from now to the end of the year. I gave a penny so I assume that I will be counted?</p>
<p>one more reason you never see LACs ranked in the same polls with the Ivy League.</p>
<p>Dartmouth, Holy Cross, Williams, Davidson, and Princeton have a combination of strong alumni reunion and athletic programs which develops school spirit and good alumni giving rates.</p>
<p>This past year Middlebury’s alumni giving was 61%. That will be reflected in the next set of rankings. </p>
<p>One way to look at an alumni network, is to in terms of personal job seeking help. The small LACs are not well known, but they provide great alumni connections. If I am job seeking in any reasonably sized city, I have no qualms about cold calling alumni from my school. My experience has been that fellow alumni are more than happy to speak to me and help me by providing more connections. My husband, a UC grad, does not feel he can use fellow UC grads to network unless he knows them personally.</p>
<p>Par - I dont think athletics has much to do with the high rates at Princeton, Dartmouth, and the top LACs. In fact I would say it has nothing to do with them. People at these schools tend to feel very loyal to their school because the schools tend to do so much for them as students and because socially they are very tightknit.</p>
<p>Alumni giving in my opinion is also a measure of pride the students take in the school</p>
<p>The big sports schools make you give a donation in order to be eligible to buy football/basketball tickets. Nice little extortion racket that helps juice these alumni giving numbers.</p>
<p>at Clemson, you would have to pay a yearly membership fee to IPTAY, the athletic scholarship/athletic department organization, before being able to buy most football tickets. would this count for “alumni giving”?</p>